State of the Market

[dsc]

Yes - I do personal projects and upskill myself (especially with DevOps where I have only 2 years experience). Also have more time to spend with my family which is positive (especially that have new 6 month old baby). It was fine for 2-3 months, but now it starts to be bit frustrating...

Likely need to start to consider permanents soon.
Even consider to go back to my country of origin (Poland) where the IT market still seems to be in the good fit.I tested it last week - applied to 3 jobs and got 2 interviews. However, they all require to be based in Poland for those contracts and while I don't want to do revolution in my live and go back, especially with 2 babies.

After that experience I am wondering whether the IT contracting market is broken generally or just in the UK.

Curious what you find on the perm market. In general software devs always had it pretty easy as there was never enough of them around (especially in Poland as you've already mentioned) and some roles could be done remotely (most / all dev roles can imho, but that's a different story). Btw what's with the requirement to be based in Poland?

FYI Denmark / Holland has a really hot wind energy market, maybe more work is available there? typically English is enough to get by and they often say yes to full remote working (but I think dealing with a non-EU country might be an issue).

[avonleigh]

Yes - I do personal projects and upskill myself (especially with DevOps where I have only 2 years experience). Also have more time to spend with my family which is positive (especially that have new 6 month old baby). It was fine for 2-3 months, but now it starts to be bit frustrating...

Likely need to start to consider permanents soon.
Even consider to go back to my country of origin (Poland) where the IT market still seems to be in the good fit.I tested it last week - applied to 3 jobs and got 2 interviews. However, they all require to be based in Poland for those contracts and while I don't want to do revolution in my live and go back, especially with 2 babies.

After that experience I am wondering whether the IT contracting market is broken generally or just in the UK.

Don't think it's just UK. Number of active contracts in Europe seems to be very low as well.

[hobnob]

My current contract (inside IR35) was intended to be a placeholder for the client, while they recruited new permanent staff. Based on that, I didn't expect there to be any talk of extension. However, it turns out that there's a freeze on new FTE (Full Time Equivalent) staff; they're now looking for people to do an 18-month fixed term contract instead (presumably still at the same permie salary), which has made it harder for them to find candidates.

That's good news for me, because I'm likely to get a 3-month extension while they continue their recruitment process. However, I wonder whether this is a wider trend, i.e. whether businesses are trying to avoid being stuck with ongoing bills. If so, it means that "go permie for a while" might not be a viable option.

[DrGUID]

Had a few phonecalls from recruiters this week (C# dev). Agents have generally said it's been up and down. Easter was unusually quiet for a new financial year but things have picked up.

I expect there are more people looking following the wave of dotcom company redundancies and there has seemingly been a huge uptick in immigration from South Asia (very noticeable in our local healthcare industry, where salaries are stagnant despite huge labour shortages).

I'm trying to keep my head down in my current permie role. However this week the powers that be decided to block the internet on our development virtual machines. As I'm a web developer I've pointed out the idiodicy of such a decision, but hey, I'm just a dev not a highly paid CEO.

If I was younger I'd train into something else. Adjusted for inflation I'm on the same salary I was on in 2012 but the job has gotten 3x more complex because you're now expected to know a dozen JavaScript frameworks, Azure + AWS and a whole load of other DevOps stuff.

[The_Equalizer]

If I was younger I'd train into something else. Adjusted for inflation I'm on the same salary I was on in 2012 but the job has gotten 3x more complex because you're now expected to know a dozen JavaScript frameworks, Azure + AWS and a whole load of other DevOps stuff.

I was having the exact same conversation this week; it's got substantially more complicated for the same cash. I've been doing random training off my own bat to try and ensure gaps are filled. Our team is coming apart at the seams with people leaving to both internal and external positions plus a general sense of mutiny. Oh for the 'normal days' pre-covid. That, and a couple of mill to be able to put my feet up.

[eek]

+2 back in 2015 if you understood model driven apps you knew everything you needed to know about Dynamics CE.

Now you need to know about canvas apps (code Jenga), power automate (so numerous random api syntaxes), portal pages and azure.

its 5 times as complex and we no longer have anyone who understands how the thing works as a whole…

[TheGreenBastard]

I was having the exact same conversation this week; it's got substantially more complicated for the same cash. I've been doing random training off my own bat to try and ensure gaps are filled. Our team is coming apart at the seams with people leaving to both internal and external positions plus a general sense of mutiny. Oh for the 'normal days' pre-covid. That, and a couple of mill to be able to put my feet up.

What's interesting is that from my own experiences the developers themselves invited this, there is/was a culture of "build it, run it, own it" and the cornerstones of this ideology is bleated out by the developers themselves. Developers are a great example of a discipline where the people involved are good at a particular skill, but inside their heads there's not much going on, not much true general intelligence, incapable of seeing the writing on the wall, selling things like "open offices are good for ideation" and "build it, run it, own it" which results in them being responsible for the entire system.

[JustKeepSwimming]

If I was younger I'd train into something else. Adjusted for inflation I'm on the same salary I was on in 2012 but the job has gotten 3x more complex because you're now expected to know a dozen JavaScript frameworks, Azure + AWS and a whole load of other DevOps stuff.

Most jobs, certainly skilled jobs have flatlined since 2012. It's the lower paid that have seen any sort of rise.

I think tech being a gravy train was always going to end, happens with everything once the unwashed masses catch on and enter the industry.

[Fraidycat]

What's interesting is that from my own experiences the developers themselves invited this

Software developers also invented and embraced writing open source software. I said decades ago that open source devalues software development and our worth. It is even worse now, it will be the end of development because the AI is trained on all the open source that is out there, and sometime in the next 5 to 15 years the AI will be good enough to make development so easy that it pays just half of what it pays today. I will be retired by then, but i would not want to be a young software developer today.

[sadkingbilly]

I said decades ago .

when you were writing applications in COBOL???